REACTION: Questions Emerge as Kansas Jayhawks Football Falls at Illinois Fighting Illini 23-17

on today's lock on j-hawks I miss Andy cotal Nikki you are locked on Jayhawks your daily podcast on the Kansas j-hawks part of the locked on podcast Network your team every day I'm Derek Johnson you can find me on Twitter at D Johnson radio and this is locked on Jayhawks thank you to the every dayers tuning in to each and every episode thank for making lock on Jayhawks your first listen every day we are free and available anywhere you get your podcasts you can also find us on our YouTube page where you can like And subscribe we're going to get into KU losing to Illinois 23-7 what went wrong in the game what does it mean for KU moving forward in the near and short term we'll get to go to the game what happened for good players and bad players in the game what's next for KU with all a sudden a huge game against UNLV today's episode of the show is brought to you by 5H Hour Energy go to 5our energy.com use promo code locked on CFB to receive 20% off your order so let startor here Kansas loses 23 to 17 just a mading loss from several different Avenues one k you had the lead late couldn't hold on to it um two you look at you feel like I don't know I I feel like Kansas is still the better team um that it was just Illinois's night and I don't know maybe the Long Haul it'll be proven that Illinois is the better team and that's why they won this game right um but like there were just bad turnovers some weird stuff that happened you're on the road in this game early in the season the goals are still in front of KU like that's kind of the good news here this isn't a big 12 loss it was always going to be determined whether KU made the playoff or Not by if they win the Big 12 like this isn't going to matter to that now there are other goals you can get to making it to a bowl game winning 10 games that would be a huge deal for this program that those take a hit by losing this game but if you're talking about the the largest goal which is trying to win the Big 12 and make the playoff those are still in front of you the problem becomes though if you're losing this game if you're losing at Illinois a team who I don't know could win five six games maybe Illinois is better than think maybe Illinois with Brett Brett belma ends up being a seven or eight win team and you feel a little bit different at this at the end of the day um and that kind of remains to be seen and how that plays out but if you're losing this game you have a lot of other games on your schedule who are playing teams either right below of the same caliber or even better than Illinois this season so if you're losing in Illinois how are you expecting to lose to win at West Virginia or how are you expecting you know to to beat Iowa State or some of these other teams Iowa State just got a big win at Iowa by the way so you look at some of these and obviously not every game is the same and every matchup is the same and matchups you know Styles make fight and so to speak and everything like that but point being if this is the Kansas the one we saw in this game that we're going to see for a majority of the game moving forward the Big 12 title conversation is not a conversation it should more so be moving the goal post to can you make a third consecutive bowl game can you beat your rival in Kansas State like those would become the discussions as opposed to the Big 12 now it is still early in the season so we don't have to move to those goals at least just yet but it does start moving to our Forefront a little bit because Jaylen Daniels really struggled in this football game it was rough it felt like the play calling wasn't great either Kansas was able to run the football they just didn't want to do it as much and Kansas just decided to like passing the ball it felt like it was either receiver screen or a deep ball and that wasn't very effective for KU because they average less yards per pass than they average yards per run you don't see that very often that was not good and so I don't know how much of the blame you you divvy out to maybe just Jaylen you know continuing to build the rust off I mean let's not forget he didn't really play and Spring ball didn't play last year right there's rust that you're building off I don't know if there's aist residual impact of the injuries that he has I don't know if it's Andy kcki the offensive coordinator who's now at Penn State um how much of maybe is there just a big downgrade from him to Jeff Grimes is it just that it's early in the season and Jeff Grimes is still you know working through the new system for Kansas and that's just going to get better as the season goes on those are things that we don't have the answer to because it's just week two but you saw some bad warning signs in this game that if it's not corrected quickly this thing could go south in quite fight the hurry now on the bright side to give a little positive here the defense played a great game now you could argue okay they scored 23 they had the dropped ball that would have been a touchdown uh ended up being a field goal they could have scored 27 like how great of a defensive performance really is that okay but you also threw a pick six on your end of of the ball which was just I mean combination of a bad play call you're calling the same play to the opposite side everybody knew it was coming um bad throw whatever you want to call it so that gives up seven points you gave up the other field the first field goal after you threw an interception which gives a bit of a momentum boost in its own um I think they scored the what they had the the other score off the the Muff punt that should I don't know that's the the dumbest rule ever um but they scored again off that like a lot of their scores were off momentum boosting or changing plays and overall like your defense you held them to 271 yards of offense they averaged 2.3 yards per carry if you would have told me Kansas was going to hold Illinois to 271 and 2.3 yards per carry coming into this one I would have said Kansas is going to win this game by 23 touchdowns at minimum like seriously that's what I would have thought coming into this game which makes it both more maddening and a little bit of optimism coming out of this game because the optimistic part is that hey you stopped the team who's got a big running back who wants to run the football and lean on you and that can come into play in games against like West Virginia and Iowa State and I don't know some of these I don't know Iowa State throws it maybe a little bit more but nonetheless like that can come into handy in some of these games and and that looked like a really good run defense an improved run defense an improved defense overall that's a good sign for the big picture but if Jaylen Daniels ain't the guy that we think Jaylen Daniels can be and and has been in the past and if Jeff Grimes ain't close to Andy kikki how much does it matter because if you're taking a step forward on defense what if you took two steps back on the offensive side of the football and so it's just maddening because KU only had 32 seven on offense on their own and a lot of that came on that last drive just picking up some garbage time yards uh they averaged five yards per play this is crazy though K averaged 5.6 yards per carry they only averaged 4.4 yards per pass and they had three turnovers I mean holy cow that is an like run the ball run the ball you know I don't know I I don't know what else to say run the ball like Kansas was able to run the football well Deon Neil had a good game Daniel haa had a good game they're just throwing deep every play and it's incomplete or it's an interception at some point why do you not do something I just I I didn't understand it I didn't understand it and I I don't know what to think of that moving forward because um on one hand I guess play calling is easy to correct like just change what you're doing but also like I don't know if you're calling plays like that typically is just what I I don't know I don't know a lot of questions there I guess is uh point being I think you can make an argument that's up there with the short list of worst losses in the Lance lold era I mean it's hard to pick anything from 2021 You could argue like the Iowa State or the Texas Tech homecoming games in 2021 just from a standpoint of like how bad you got beat you were never never really competitive You could argue maybe a few games here there in in 20122 um I don't know but it's kind of hard like you made a bll game that year 2023 maybe last year you could argue like Texas Tech you had a lot of chances to win that game you could argue the Kansas State game from the standpoint of like what that win would have meant and that you had a lot of chances to win it but even then both those games you had like a third string quarterback in there um you could argue This Is It Like You could argue this is the one uh in terms of that kind of being the case but it kind of depends how K responds from here which becomes the big question because big picture I could make the argument either way and we will based on where Kansas goes that this was either a warning sign or this was a blip on the radar the side of it where big picture I can make you feel okay after this is me saying hey teams lose on the road in college football all the time and if Illinois ends up being a six or seven win football team that happens all the time in college football and in theory how is this that much different in Pro like the win and loss is different but in process if I compared Kansas's Road game at Nevada in Reno a 2-10 Nevada team last year to their game that they played tonight against Illinois and lost against a better Illinois team in a tougher home environment like the process outside of the result the process probably worse to only beat that Nevada team by seven than it is to lose on the road to Illinois where some weird things happened like that weird muff punt that again I don't know why that's not a safety or whatever that's a dumb rule um where stuff like that where you had bad turnovers where you didn't look good and and still figuring stuff out early in the season this on its own is almost a better result process driven than that out one and Kansas ended up being just fine last year and I can also point to like last year in the Big 12 championship game who played for the Big 12 Championship Texas and Oklahoma State Texas was tied 10 to 10 in the fourth quarter against Wyoming now they won the game good for them Oklahoma State lost in it was either week two or week three to South Alabama they didn't just lose they got crushed South Alabama who ended up being like a six and six team they lost by 30 points to South Alabama they still made the the the big 12 Championship now they made a tangible change olly Gordon became like the lead back and turned into a Heisman candidate right I don't know that Kansas has a Heisman candidate sitting on the bench I don't know Cole Balor go on no no it'll it'll continue to be jaying but um I guess point being also you go back to two years ago this is also a little different because that Tain team ended up you know winning a new year six bowl but like K State lost to Tain they ended up winning the Big 12 Championship so who knows maybe Illinois ends up being really good I could point to this and say okay you saw signs that the defense is better and on the offensive side of the football as long as J Jen Daniels gets back to the Jaylen that we've seen on the bigger sample size you the running game was still there like everything else should be clicking you just stop the turnovers and jaylen's normal jayen and you start running the ball more you're going to be good to go right you could make those arguments with the big picture stuff and this doesn't count for a conference loss but if we're talking about the other side of the argument I could also make the argument you should feel horrible about ever getting your hopes up as high as you might have done in the offseason about that Kansas could win the Big 12 or could make the college football playoff because if you're losing at illino how do you expect to beat Iowa State how do you expect to win at Kansas State and win some of these big games that you need to win if you want to accomplish that and that the goal should be you know just go for a third straight Bull game or whatever it is and that there are real leaks in what the passing game is going to look like and that the transition to Jeff Grimes is not going to be as smooth sailing as we might have thought all of that depends whether you're on the positive side or the negative side it's a fork in the road upcoming this week with really the UNL game I I might even argue the game after that too with West Virginia because if you beat un but lose to West Virginia and you're two and two I don't know you're kind of back to square one but these next two weeks kind of will be the fork in the road on whether this was just a weird bad game or if it was a precursor of what this season is going to be like from KU it's a learning opportunity and we'll see where they go from here let's get to our goats of the game on locked on Jayhawks we were brought to you by five 5 Hour Energy I need one right now and I'm going to tomorrow for NFL Sunday because we're up late talking here on the show and you know got to get Juiced back up and enjoy NFL Sunday it's week one not gonna let this uh spoil my joy watching sports or whatever you're doing you grab that Five Hour Energy Shot to stay alert to watch all your favorite games or if you stayed up late see that intense overtime game take a 5our energy shot in the morning so you can start your day with zero sugar in a convenient portable size it's the perfect pickme up for getting stuff done 5H Hour Energy website has flavors Galore watermelon tropical burst grape Berry and more there's a flavor for everyone you can try them all on the site you can even option have your option to build your own 12pack or 24 pack where you can try a bunch of different ones or just go for one flavor you love you choose the flavor it's delivered right to your door if you go to 5our energy.com that's number 5our energy.com and get some 5our energy product today you can use promo code locked on CFB to receive 20% off your order this offer is valid until September 30th on one order and cannot be used with other promotions the code is not good on subscriptions uh go to 5our energy.com today continuing on with lock on Jayhawks are goats of the game are good goats are bad goats I I normally do a KU play of the game it's harder to do in a loss if I was going to give it out had they ended up winning there was like that third and long where they threw the out route to Skinner he ends up getting the first down they end up going down later and getting the touchdown I think to LJ Arnold that might have been the play of the game to that point um if you're talking about the negative play of the game I don't know there were a couple big throws by Luke Alm outd Jaylen Daniels in this game he made a couple big time throws on like some third and Longs um I would probably point I there's so many things that went wrong for KU probably the interception I would think when KU was on like the plus 40 in the second half that might be like the negative play of the game that that caused it to go arai um so as far as the good goats here if you have Luke Grim in a college football fantasy league that dude is just going to eat up targets Jaylen Daniel is it's almost like too much he's kind of just staring him down he had nine catches in the game uh low yardage total but anyway uh Devon Neil gets a good goat here he was awesome 14 carries 101 yards he averaged over seven yards per carry Unfortunately they didn't give him the football enough you have one of the best running backs in college football Feed the Beast I didn't understand that so uh if you add it in Daniel haaw the two of them had 21 carries for 140 yards I think every game Neil should be getting 15 plus carries and high shot should be getting 10 plus carries and that's kind of at minimum like I don't know man uh offensive line I I think had a good game for KU uh there were a few plays with pressure I think Jaylen got sacked once but it was only one sack and you were able to run the football the passing game struggles for KU wasn't about the offensive line getting beat up by the Illinois D line it was a play calling thing it was taking way too many shots downfield when it wasn't there and just you know maybe some poor decisions here or there or poor play calls whatever it was like I thought the offensive line played good for Kansas Marvin Grant had an awesome game nine tackles he had a sack he had a pass breakup I thought he should have got credited with that Force fumble but it ended up being credited to Cornell wheeler I also gave a good goat to Cornell wheeler he had eight tackles three tfls got the force fumble those guys were awesome as kind of I mean Grant kind of playing that linebacker hybrid Hawk Cino role um Cornell wheeler plugging up the middle h both those guys played really good games for KU uh the KU line I think gets a good goat just in general in the same V is like the offensive line um because I I think it was a little bit of everyone like I don't think there was one guy who was like yeah he just had a dominant game but everybody had their flash moments on the D line you held them to just a little over two yards per carry you would have taken that coming into the game you got a couple sacks on Luke Alm and a couple other plays where you didn't get sacks but you forced pressures that you forced incompletions on plays that would have been like I'm thinking of a couple like bootleg plays where you got on him so quickly and deep in the back field he couldn't complete what would have been normally kind of an easy throw to the flats like the pressure was there the Run stuffing was there there were some Flash plays by Jeremy Robinson there were some Flash plays by Dylan woodkey DJ Warner early in the game there was that uh sack by Dean Miller uh Tommy Dunn had some Flash in there like there were a few DJ Withers play a lot of guys flashed on that dline I thought they had a good game and then Damon Greaves uh the big question for him coming into year two was could he add more distance on his punts well two punts over 50 yards on both long of 58 good on Damon gaves for doing that um even though it was just two punts what about the bad goats in this game I mean I I feel bad singling guys out but like that was a bad game for Jaylen Daniels um 18 of 32 141 yards two touchdowns three interceptions 10 carries for 35 yards if you either take care of the football or hit the de like you got to do one of the two if you're if you're going to take all these deep shots and be high risk High reward it's got to be one of the two you either got to hit on some like right like the jamus Winston thing where it's like I'm throwing picks but I'm hitting some big plays or you got to keep hold of the football and play that possession game and and take care of the ball so that your running game and your defense can take over and I think the way I would put it the 2022 plus 2023 versions of Jaylen Daniels was the best QB of the lipold era Jason Bean last season would be next up and Jaylen Daniels what we're seeing now would probably be below what Jason Bean was in both 2022 and 2023 it is still early maybe he's just shaking off rust again it had been a long time since he played football didn't really play in Spring ball and uh obviously missing all of last season maybe some of the stuff is still bothering him maybe he's still adjusting to the offense maybe uh more of this is is on the the the play calling in the OC than it is on Jaylen I mean keep in mind they have the the the stuff in the the headset right like I mean there's a chance that one of the coaches is signaling to him um where they're saying hey they're in this coverage this guy's going to be open on this play and then Jaylen throws that guy and he gets pick right like I I don't know there could be blamed to throw around at different people and I don't know where that goes but that was not a good passing game again they averaged over one yard less per pass than they did per run in the past couple years ku's been averaging nine nine and a half yards per pass um which is good of a running team as they've been it's basically like four yards more than their averaging per carry and that was not at all the case tonight um I think it's also apparent that Andy cotal Nikki was a gigantic upgrade over Jeff Grimes there Jeff Grimes was fired from Baylor and there was some of it where it's just like okay he was just set up based on the personnel and what was going on at Baylor with Dave Randa and everything but like I don't know you're I'm starting to wonder maybe there's more a little bit more blame that that that needed to be talked about there run the football run the ball Kansas was running the football really well how many times did it feel like they they had a good run on first down or honestly they didn't even run that much on first down um or it' be second and 10 and they'd have like a seven yard run it's third and three and then it's like deep shot it's like what what's going on here um don't love the play calling now was that just an early season thing where Illinois tricked them in a way and maybe Illinois had a lot of exotic defenses and they thought they were going to get one thing on film and so they game planned for this and it ended up being something completely different because it's early in the season and you don't have as much stuff on tape of what a team is going to do that is entirely possible uh is it also possible you're adjusting early on in in your career and um or your time at Kansas and and they'll figure this out and see what happened on tape and and get better for it yeah that's entirely possible too as far as this game on Saturday very poor from those two guys and and honestly the running game was good enough to win the defense was good enough to win the special teams was good enough to win um unfortunately like those are two kind of big things your play calling and your quarterback uh also the rule on the Muff punts again that that's a bad goat like what are we doing here that's the dumbest rule ever uh one other quick one I do want to bring up is time management because specifically timeout management this I I coaches do this all the time it blows my mind and I don't understand it somebody needs to explain to people like I mean these coaches are very smart people they're very high paid people but like this seems to be such an oversight you are losing Time by not calling timeouts before the two-minute warning okay here's what I mean by that let's say it is first and 10 for a team and the other team has two timeouts okay and there's two minutes and 30 seconds or two minutes and 40 seconds right there's the two-minute warning or two-minute timeout whatever you want to call it and okay they run a play you call a timeout now there's 2:30 they run another play you call another timeout now there's 220 they run their third down play and then it's fourth down now what does the clock stop at stops at the two-minute warning so there'd be two minutes on the clock right okay let's flip this the other way there's 240 on the clock they run their first down play you don't call your timeout clock stops at two minutes to go so there's a two-minute warning you still got your two timeouts now second down they run a play say it takes to 154 take a timeout they run another play let's say it takes to 149 you take your time out it's still fourth down in both scenarios the other scenario there's a minute 49 left the first scenario you're taking the timeouts before the two-minute warning there's two minutes left not a ton of time difference but that's 10 or 11 seconds what do you think I I mean I don't know that it would have mattered at the end of the game but don't you think Kansas would have liked another 10 or 11 seconds at the end of the game to maybe get one more like 10 yard gain so they could have actually gotten the hail Mar off I don't know maybe that's just me all right let's finish up what's next for KU big game upcoming with UNLV this episode of the show is brought to you by ibata it's summertime which means it's barbecue season stock up on all your grilling favorites and earn cash back on every purchase when you use ibata so you won't have to choose between burgers or hot dogs you get both ibata is a free app that let you earn cash back every time you shop you can earn on hundreds of items from groceries to Beauty Supplies even toys so you can make sure you're beating inflation no matter what you're purchasing you can save on 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did in week one they beat Houston 27-7 and that was a game where we kind of looked at it and went okay that is alarming unov could be pretty good but Houston might just stink like what if Houston's just like a two- wi team or something like that well what did Houston do this week they almost beat 15th ranked Oklahoma 16 to 12 was the final score now maybe that'll just be the aberration and that was Houston's best game of the season and Oklahoma overlooked him and Houston will still end up winning two games or something like that maybe Oklahoma will be a seven- win team I don't know it's so many puzzle pieces to figure out this early in the season but I'll tell you this I think unov is a better team than last year because I think unlv's defense is much better than it was a season ago I don't think the QB play is quite as good without Jaden Maya but it's still good enough and they their skill players are back they're really good players this might be a coin flip type game like I I don't know is it going to be crazy if yov I don't think yov will be a favorite but it might be like KU by minus two and a half minus three which is pretty nuts coming into this one so this is a fork in the road type game for KU are you the team you showed against Illinois or are you gonna figure out the passing because you look at that unov game last year how did KU win it Jason Bean had six touchdowns they didn't have that great of a running game Jason Bean had six passing touchdowns threw it all over the field was the Bull game MVP and all the receivers went off the offense we just saw against Illinois you have trust that they can do that again against unov but if they do all of a sudden you're going to be like okay they figured it out they found their Mojo that Illinois game was a blip in the radar you lose to unov all of a sudden we start talking much different goals we start talking can you crawl your way to six wins to make a third straight bowl game because that would still be you know big picture A good a good step I guess you would say in where this program is going but from where the preseason was if you want to get back to the point where you're talking about being a top 25 team being a big 12 title Contender being a team that can you know contend to win double digit games you gotta show out this next week and show that the Illinois game that we just saw was more of the aberration that'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks you can find our show anywhere you get your podcast including on our YouTube page we'll have our key takeaways coming up later this week more on the KU UNLV game and plenty to come at you this has been locked on Jayhawks